Our current imaging process still involves quite a bit of hands on setup. From joining the domain to changing the name of the PC and a lot of other menial tasks that I feel, can be automated. I'd like to start writing some scripts, and, after reading a few threads I've come to these two applications.

Just a quick insight to a few things I'd like to be able to do. Hopefully this will make sense and you folks can tell me if it's even possible with these tools.

Change the PC Name

Change the Description

Join the domain (may not need this)

Launch various websites/java applications to verify Java is working correctly (we have a number of web based applications that require Java and it's critical we test)

Activate Office silently (or not silently, anything to activate it would be great)

Add shortcuts to the user's desktop
If this could be done for each user that signs into the machine, that would be amazing. I don't know anything about coding/scripting but what I'd essentially like to happen is that when the machine is joined to the domain, it detects the new user and creates the shortcuts on the desktop.

I realize a lot of folks will probably say GP should be the way to go but I don't have any control of that unfortunately.

Any tips on helping me streamline/clean up our current imaging process? I'd like to be as automated and as hands-off as possible.

There are a few software's you will notice have to be done under the users specific profile, they cannot be configured prior or under a different account (secure printer user pw settings, outlook/exchange click OK 3x, Cisco Jabber server settings, etc)

I'm using FOG. I'd use MDT but there's a lot about using MDT that seems a bit daunting and I haven't found enough time to explore much of what I believe makes MDT work (using sysprep properly, generating a solid unattend.xml file, etc). Not to mention I'd probably have to run that from a server and management doesn't really want to put anything else on our servers. I'm having to run our FOG machine on a separate, isolated network off of an older 790 as it is :\

@Galen - when you put it in the public\desktop folder, does it go to all of the user profiles' desktops?

I used System Center Configuration Manager to handle this. As long as I know the MAC address, I can build a new machine from scratch. It will then join it to the domain, install Office as well as various other installs.

I can't remember, do I need to buy SCCM? I used it before with Microsoft's FEP and that was a lot of fun.. learning how to use SCCM to deploy their A/V solution. That got scrapped as we were purchased by a larger company and we now fall under whatever software they use (Symantec in our case).

if you have 100's of pc's to image, I would go with the remote deployment options... although most Senior Engineers will notice the traffic of you broadcasting or unicasting 20gigs to several machines at once, so an isolated switch is recommended

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SCCM is the expensive, bells-and-whistles version (and includes more than just an imaging solution), and MDT is the free and more basic variant. It's still very powerful though. It takes a bit of time to get the hang of it, but is well worth the effort, and can make things so much easier if you have multiple hardware models and software configurations to deploy.

I don't have 100s of PCs at a time, usually about 10-15 at a time and going over the network would likely never happen. A lot of what I like to do has already been shot down by upper management as most decisions are ultimately decided at the very top level of the organization. It's a strange situation but, it is what it is.

Gabrielle, can you provide any tutorials/walk-through guides on MDT? Something... comprehensive perhaps? This is getting away from my original thoughts on AutoIt but if I can accomplish this through a different method, then by all means I'm open! Our current imaging process with FOG could be cleaned up greatly and that's where I am today.

Can I run MDT from a desktop like I'm doing with the FOG server? I've got a small, 24 port Cisco 2960 switch I'm using. It's not ideal but it works and I can deploy all of our images from it.

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The first time I set up MDT, I followed this great multi-page guide that I found online. Let me see if I can find the link for you now. Worst case, I'll have to check when I'm back in the office tomorrow.

As a followup to Si's comments, you can also pair MDT with WSUS, which is another free Microsoft product that helps manage Windows Updates. WSUS allows you to manage Microsoft updates to all your workstations, not just new images, and is part of the paid SCCM suite as well.